Shakespeare's Rebel by C.C. Humphreys

Author:C.C. Humphreys [Humphreys, C.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781409114918
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2013-03-14T06:00:00+00:00

XXIII

Nonsuch Palace

It was the cobbles that woke him, the sudden clatter of them under his mount’s shod hooves. He jerked upright in his saddle, looked around him, bleary eyes confirming what his ears had already told him – they had at long last left the unending countryside behind. They had reached the City.

Or at least Westminster. The abbey’s unmistakable spire was directly ahead of them. They were riding towards it.

The thought made him swivel. If they were heading towards the abbey, they were heading away from the palace. Away from the goal that had sustained them through the four days and nights of hard riding. Away from the Queen. Had they already failed? While he nodded on his horse’s neck, had Essex lost his gamble? And were they now making for Westminster to seek sanctuary in its cloisters from her majesty’s wrath?

‘She’s not there,’ came a voice from beside him. It had an Irish lilt to it, and John glanced sharp right. Captain Christopher St Lawrence, six foot six of Hibernian braggadocio, was riding stirrup to stirrup with him. He’d known him a little in the Netherlands. A good and loyal soldier, one of the few he’d at least been happy to see in Dublin. The man smiled. ‘I thought you might slip off. So I was here to catch you.’

‘Much obliged.’ Sleeping men had slipped off their horses in the hurly-burly dash across the realm. Most had survived with bruises. One knight had broken his arm and been abandoned on the roadside. There was to be barely a pause in their journey, only the briefest of halts to commandeer fresh horses at country inns, plunder their larders, sleep for a scant few hours in their barns and ride on. John thought he had made the journey to Dublin in a record time of five days. Essex’s return had taken only four.

He yawned widely, stared at the man beside him. Even the big Irishman, with all the vigour of youth on his side, was looking exhausted. What had he just said? Why were they making for Westminster?

His confused looks must have been question enough. An answer came. ‘She’s at Nonsuch Palace,’ the captain said. ‘We enquired for her at Whitehall and were told so.’

Nonsuch. John’s sigh melded into another vast yawn. It was ten miles south of the city, nothing when compared to all the miles they’d cantered – from the valleys of north Wales, through the vales of Evesham and the White Horse, over the hills of the Cotswolds and the Chilterns. However, like most journeys, the last part seemed endless. He remembered how interminable the Channel had appeared after two and a half years away with Drake.

For mercy’s sake, could he not just sleep?

The party clattered on to the dock at the Lambeth ferry. On the opposite bank, Lollards’ Tower thrust up from the Archbishop’s Palace. It had been but two weeks since he had been a prisoner within its black stones, had that audience with the Queen and her secretary.

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